Oprah’s Golden Globe speech. The 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. The Atlanta season 2 trailer. Marvel’s Black Panther dropping in a month. We’re only a week into 2018, and the official Conscious Negro Advent Calendar is already half full. However, Oprah, Atlanta and MLK are all known…

The Root spent an hour speaking to Cornel West on Dec. 8 on a wide range of issues, including former President Barack Obama, Sen. Bernie Sanders, neoliberalism, President Donald Trump and, of course, Ta-Nehisi Coates. Watch an edited version of our conversation above.

I love Cornel West. Part of the reason I am a fan of his is that, before my nonfame and lack of fortune at The Root,I taught a college-level course called “Race as an Economic Construct.” The idea of the course was to eliminate the subjectivity of race theory by explaining race in America through the lens of…

I’m writing this from the third floor of the brownstone in Pittsburgh’s Northside that my wife and I have been renting for a year and a half now. I’m in a bedroom that has been repurposed as both my office and my de facto closet. My daughter’s bedroom is on the same floor, and the bedroom my wife and I share is…

A few months ago, I was at a Bernie Sanders rally in Birmingham, Ala., surrounded by white people excited to see their democratic socialist Santa Claus. After a mixtape filled with tunes by James Taylor, the Beatles and Bob Marley, a performance by a gospel choir and a short speech by the dynamic Nina Turner, the…

Ta-Nehisi Coates is one of those people who always have something smart to say, because he’s actually really, really smart. Whether he’s reminding Americans that they elected the first white president or providing the cheat code for white liberals to explain to their kinfolk why they can’t say “nigger,” Coates is both…

“What would white people do without the nigger?” It’s a question that courses and bleeds through Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “The First White President.” It’s never asked explicitly, but it lurks beneath each point, ensconced in the piece’s premise: a fundamental and connective marrow. And it’s been with me since Sunday…